The man’s eyes and the girl’s eyes met at that moment for the first time. The girl’s were perfectly clear, mild, and expressionless, and into the man’s there stole a cynical tinge of admiration.
“By Jove,” he said to himself, “she is clever!”
At that instant Mrs. Pomeroy’s voice was heard from the drawing-room calling placidly for her daughter. And Miss Pomeroy moved forward with graceful promptitude into the drawing-room.
“We shall meet in Scotland by-and-by, I believe,” said Loring pleasantly, as he shook hands with Miss Pomeroy. “You were to be at the Stewarts’, I believe, in the last week of September, and so am I. I shall look forward to it. Good-bye, Miss Pomeroy.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Loring.”
A few minutes later Loring also took leave of Lady Bracondale and went away. The satisfaction was stronger than ever in his eyes. Maud Pomeroy’s words had somehow or other carried instantaneous conviction to his mind, and in the fact he believed them to contain he saw certain social ruin for Julian Romayne.
“He’s done for himself all round,” he said to himself as he let himself into his rooms half an hour later. “That nice little house in Chelsea will be to let next season.”
At that same moment, in the manager’s room at the offices of the Welcome Diamond Mining Company, Julian Romayne was standing by the table, looking down at Ramsay as the latter sat leaning back in his chair, indifferent enough in attitude, but with a hard intensity of expression in his dull eyes. Julian had evidently just risen, pushing back his chair, the back of which he was gripping almost convulsively. His face was ashen, his eyes were dilated with an expression of desperate, intolerable temptation.
“I’ll do it,” he was saying in a harsh, unnatural voice. “I’ll do it, Ramsay. Shake hands on it.”